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. 1988 Feb 25;16(4):1517–1528. doi: 10.1093/nar/16.4.1517

An oligopurine sequence bias occurs in eukaryotic viruses.

A M Beasty 1, M J Behe 1
PMCID: PMC336331  PMID: 3347495

Abstract

Twenty four DNA and RNA viral nucleotide sequences, comprising over 346 kilobases, have been analyzed for the occurrence of strings of contiguous purine or pyrimidine residues. On average strings greater than or equal to 10 contiguous purines or pyrimidines are found three and a half times more frequently than would be expected for a random distribution of bases. Detailed analysis of the 172 kilobase Epstein-Barr viral sequence shows that the bias in favor of contiguous purine residues increases with the length of the purine string. These findings are similar to those seen for genomic DNA from higher eukaryotes. In contrast no overrepresentation of oligopurine or oligopyrimidine strings is observed in 52 kilobases from eight bacteriophage and E. coli DNA sequences.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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